Chapter 4 - The Sound of Glass Breaking
The east wing nursery was bathed in the pale, flickering blue light of a thunderstorm. The French doors leading out to the wraparound balcony had been shattered inward, jagged shards of safety glass glittering across the white wool rug like scattered diamonds.
A tall man in a charcoal trench coat stood by the crib, his silhouette cutting sharply against the lightning flashes outside. He held a suppressed Glock in his right hand, his posture relaxed, casual, and utterly lethal.
Elena was tied to a rocking chair in the corner, a strip of duct tape clamped fiercely across her mouth, her eyes wide with unadulterated terror as she thrashed against the ropes.
In the center of the room, sitting upright in her crib amidst pastel-colored blankets, Lily was clapping her hands together, fascinated by the pretty sparks of light reflecting off the wet glass on the floor.
"Well, well, well," Marcus murmured, his voice a gravelly rasp as he turned his head slowly toward the doorway. "The ghost of Park Avenue. Word on the street was you went soft, Alesandro. I didn't believe it until I saw the mobile dangling over a crib."
Alesandro stood in the doorway, his Beretta raised, his stance balanced and steady. Every muscle in his body was coiled like a spring, but his face remained a mask of carved granite.
"You’re standing on private property, Marcus," Alesandro said softly. "Which means you have roughly three seconds to explain why your corpse shouldn't be dumped in the East River before midnight."
Marcus chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. He didn't raise his gun toward Alesandro; instead, he casually hooked his left arm over the wooden railing of the crib, his fingers brushing dangerously close to the baby’s blanket.
"Dante sends his regards," Marcus said, his eyes glinting in the dark. "He wants the Manhattan shipping routes, fifty percent of the Zurich accounts, and your personal resignation by dawn. If you don't sign over the deeds, I take the kid back to Astoria as a ‘guest’ of the family. Let's see how long the great Alesandro Duque holds his empire together when his little bastard is screaming for milk in a damp basement."
Lily stopped clapping. She looked up at Marcus, tilted her head with curious innocence, and then looked past him to see Alesandro standing in the doorway.
Her lower lip quivered.
She didn't know who Marcus was. She didn't know about syndicates, territorial wars, or forty-million-dollar transactions. But she knew the man in the doorway.
She raised both arms toward Alesandro.
"Dada," she whispered—the first word she had ever spoken in her life, a soft, accidental syllable that shattered the tension of the room like a hammer hitting a pane of glass.
Alesandro’s chest constricted. A violent, primal surge of protective fury—pure, unadulterated, and terrifying—flooded his veins, burning away every calculated instinct he had ever possessed.
Marcus smirked. "Oh, look at that. She thinks you’re—"
The Beretta roared twice.
The suppressed shots sounded like heavy books slamming shut in an empty library. Marcus’s chest blossomed with two dark, expanding crimson circles. His eyes widened in absolute shock as the Glock slipped from his lifeless fingers, clattering against the shattered glass on the floor. He pitched forward, crashing heavily onto the rug beside the crib.
Elena screamed behind her gag, her body shaking violently.
Alesandro didn't blink. He walked across the room, stepped cleanly over the dead man, and unlatched the wooden gate of the crib. He reached down, scooped Lily into his arms, and pulled her tight against his chest, shielding her eyes with his broad palm so she wouldn't see the blood pooling on the white wool.
"It's over," Alesandro told the terrified housekeeper as he ripped the duct tape from her mouth with one swift motion. "Viktor will clean this up."
Elena gasped for air, clutching her bruised wrists. "Mr. Duque... they know. If Dante sent Marcus, the whole Outfit knows she’s here. We can't stay in New York."
Alesandro looked down at Lily. The baby had already recovered from the loud noises, her tiny fingers immediately finding his silk tie and giving it a happy, reassuring yank.
Alesandro’s jaw tightened into a lethal line.
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"We aren't running, Elena," he whispered, his eyes narrowing as he stared out the broken glass toward the rain-swept horizon of the city he owned. "We are going to pay Dante a visit."
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